Five converging global trends may present geography with world attention that may be unprecedented in the history of the discipline. These include geo-awareness, geo-enablement, geotechnologies, citizen science, and storytelling. Each of these recent trends is transforming the audience for geography and how geography is taught, perceived, and used.

Issues central to geography are now part of the global consciousness. Everyday objects are rapidly becoming locatable, and thus able to be monitored and mapped. Many tools and data sets that were formerly used and examined only by geographers and other earth and environmental scientists are now in the hands of the general public. Citizens outside academia are becoming involved in contributing data to the scientific community. Multimedia and cloud-based GIS have greatly multiplied the attraction that maps have had for centuries to tell stories.

Five converging global trends that present geography with new global opportunities.

But despite these trends bringing opportunity to geography, is geoliteracy becoming increasingly valued?

How can educators, researchers, and practitioners seize the opportunity that these trends seem to present to actively promote geographic content knowledge, skills, and perspectives throughout education and society?

Geo-Awareness

The world faces complex challenges that are global in nature but also are increasingly affecting individuals’ everyday lives. Few hours pass without the impact of seismic or weather-related hazards on human populations. Disasters resulting from these hazards affect communities, countries, and sometimes, entire continents. Changing birth rates and immigration are global issues that impact the politics and economics of nations and the social fabric of local communities. The supply of energy resources is fundamental to enable the use of technology and has been linked to standards of living and educational attainment. Epidemics and diseases affect specific segments of society and impact the entire planet in significant ways. Sustaining agriculture and fisheries is critical to food supplies. The transportation of people and products consumes massive amounts of human time and energy. Issues of water quality and quantity are fundamental to the very existence of humanity. Political instability and violence displace whole populations.

These challenges have long been some of the fundamental issues that geographers studied. Yet in the past decade, these challenges have become a part of the public consciousness. The themes that have driven geographic thinking and research have in large part become topics of everyday conversation. There is a heightened awareness that these issues affect individuals’ everyday lives, that they are serious, and that they need to be solved. There is also growing realization that they all occur somewhere, at multiple scales, with specific spatial distributions, patterns, and linkages; and with temporal and spatial components.Geo-Enablement

Societies are rapidly moving to an era where most everything in everyday life will be able to be located on a map, or “geo-enabled.” From smartphones to tablets and laptops, from webcams recording traffic or bird counts to car parking lot sensors, from orbiting Earth-imaging satellites to surface or underground sensors recording water quality, seismicity, and weather, these sensors and devices transmit a latitude–longitude signal, enabled by the coupling of GPS, smartphone towers, and Wi-Fi transmitters. As geo-enabling extends to thermostats, light switches, and appliances in ordinary homes, it contributes to “the internet of things” and “smart cities”. As these measurements become mapped within GIS and remote sensing environments, they become what Esri founder Jack Dangermond has called a “nervous system for the planet.” This geo-enablement is taking place at different rates in different areas around the world, leading to a more uniform access to technology in some areas, and increasing inequalities because of access to devices, bandwidth, and data in other areas.Geotechnologies

Until recently, satellite imagery, digital maps, aerial photographs, 3D profiles, geodatabases, spatial statistics, and related tools, methods, and data were used largely by those in GIS and scientific fields. Today, millions of maps and satellite images are viewed hourly. Like music, graphics, office tools, and other technologies, GIS has been migrating to a cloud-based “Software as a Service” (SaaS) model. Not only have geographic tools, maps, and spatial data become instantly available, they can be downloaded, streamed, embedded, changed, and reformatted on devices from smartphones to tablets, in the field, in vehicles, in research labs, in classrooms, and just about everywhere. These digital maps are used in newscasts, web pages, videos, and news feeds, becoming among the most common type of 21st Century media. Geodatabases map and synthesize data coming in from geo-enabled devices and objects, and through these objects, the public has become extremely conscious of the value of maps in their everyday lives.Citizen Science

The largest part of the “internet of things” sensor network is not electronic sensors, but the general public themselves. In fields such as phenology and bird monitoring, the public has been engaged for decades in contributing their own observations, but web-based GIS makes it easier for the general public to contribute data. The general public is also voluntarily and involuntarily providing information about their location through the use of cloud-based smartphone and web applications. Information being fed to cloud-based services offers to make life more efficient, comfortable, and interesting. Examples include connecting with others through fitness apps, recommending products matching a person’s purchasing history, and feeding individuals’ current speed and location to a regional real-time traffic map so that motorists can avoid snarls. Information about the location of things are of high interest to those providing Internet services. However, even more interesting to service providers are the movements of people, who make up a seven billion strong sensor network—providing information about the planet as has never been gathered before.Storytelling

For centuries, maps have been valued because they provide a large amount of detail in a small amount of space, and because of their capacity for telling a story. Telling stories through maps began with describing explored lands in great detail against terra incognita. Today, geographic tools, data, and multimedia on the web expand the ability and audience for storytelling through maps. Any person with a smartphone or computer can use maps to tell his or her story.

Platforms that enable citizens to tell stories through maps include Esri Story Maps and other tools. Today’s story maps range in scale, theme, and purpose. From Napoleon’s march to this year’s hurricanes, from China’s new highways to where food originates, educators, students, researchers, and the public can create their own story maps, through the use of live web maps with text, video, audio, sketches, and photographs. Teaching about the dynamic Earth with dynamic maps seems particularly appropriate to many.New Perspective, New Opportunities

This is not the first time when geography was afforded great opportunity. During World War II and again during the Cold War and Space Race, a heightened awareness of global affairs translated into calls for increased frequency and quantitative rigor in geography and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. However, these periods tended to be short-lived, and were accompanied by setbacks, such as the closure of many geography departments in the US.

Will the five trends occurring today be enough to generate and sustain the interest of the general public, as well as policymakers and educational administrators?

Will this enable the recognition of geography and the geographic perspective and cement geography as a fundamental, funded, respected subject throughout education and in decision making throughout society?

]]>http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2015/02/20/geography-on-the-world-stage/feed/0Learn More and Earn Morehttp://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2015/02/09/learn-more-and-earn-more/
http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2015/02/09/learn-more-and-earn-more/#commentsMon, 09 Feb 2015 16:16:07 +0000Brent Roderickhttp://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/?p=4320Continue reading →]]>“Do your homework, study hard, and make good grades.” We all probably heard those instructions many times during our school years. When viewing the relationship between educational attainment and earning power, this advice can be validated by cold, hard facts. According to the 2014, 4th quarter report, The Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, full-time workers age 25 and older with no high school diploma earned a weekly median wage of less than $500, compared to $664 for high school graduates with no college, and $1,224 for those holding at least a Bachelor’s degree.

Income disparity is even more startling when viewed over a working lifetime. Information in the Majors Matter article from the Donnell-Kay Foundation notes that on average, over a supposed working lifetime of 39 years, employees with less than a high school education may earn only $973,000. Conversely, a Bachelor’s degree is worth $2.8 million; professional and graduate degrees are even more valuable, at more than $3.6 million. The Donnell-Kay article also notes that lifetime earnings of workers with comparable Bachelor’s degrees may vary according to occupation. For example, a computer software engineer’s average lifetime earnings could be $3.6 million versus a retail store manager who takes home $1.8 million.

As noted in an article by the Pew Research Center, a new academic study links rising income disparity to assortative mating—the tendency of people with similar characteristics to marry. An international team of economists headed by Jeremy Greenwood of the University of Pennsylvania, theorizes that better educated people are more likely to marry other well-educated people, whereas those with less education would probably choose a less educated partner.

The Pew Research Center states in the growing economic clout of the college educated that for the first time on record, households headed by someone with at least a Bachelor’s degree received nearly half (49.7 percent) of aggregate U.S. household income; nearly one out of every two dollars went to the college educated. Income differences among educated and less educated widen even further because members of college-educated households are more likely to be married, and therefore more likely to have secondary earners contributing to the household income. The article also notes that from 1991 to 2012, income increased 9 percent for households with a Bachelor’s degree, and 20 percent for households with a professional degree. Household income declined for households with no college degree.

Unemployment is also influenced by educational attainment. In 2013, the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that the unemployment rate for those with a doctoral degree was only 2.2 percent, while the unemployment rate for those who didn’t graduate from high school was 11 percent. These figures are for full-time or salaried employees age 25 years or older, reflect only the highest rate of education attained, and do not include completion of training programs or apprenticeships.

So, did you “Do your homework, study hard, and make good grades”? It’s probably not too late!

The GIS platform helps you visualize, question, analyze, and interpret data to understand relationships, patterns, and trends. As a GIS professional, you make the GIS platform valuable and successful. You are the champion of geography-based decision making across your organization. You define and drive the adoption and application of spatial technologies.

First and foremost, GIS professionals have always been defined by a sense of purpose. Many started out as geographers who had a deep passion for the world around them and then became involved with GIS technology. GIS professionals bring a lot to an organization. They collaborate with their coworkers and with the larger GIS community. They believe in the value of geographically informed decision making and the ability of GIS to improve organizations around the world.

However, the GIS technology ecosystem is changing rapidly: cloud-based GIS, the widespread use of web mapping, the increasing adoption of open data, and the app revolution.What do these and other changes mean for the GIS professional?

These four strategies can ensure that a GIS professional not only keeps pace with these changes but remains at the forefront of this profession:

Build a strong platform

Extend the platform across the organization

Leverage existing GIS investments

Be active in the GIS community

Build a Strong Platform

Strong GIS platforms are resilient to change, provide obvious value to an organization, and are a springboard for future development. A strong platform starts with high-quality data that is created and maintained through robust data management procedures. GIS professionals leverage this quality data by building maps that communicate effectively. These maps can be delivered as apps that improve efficiency, enhance workflows, support decision making, and encourage collaboration and communication. The use of spatial analytics is applied to yield new insights and create greater understanding.

Extend the Platform

Because the ultimate audience for the GIS platform is the entire organization, it should be built so that it can be extended across the organization’s departments. Architecture should be open and interoperable so it easily integrates cross-department data and other business systems.

The GIS professional, who is responsible for ensuring continuity of spatial information management across the entire organization, develops targeted information products and apps that extend the value of the platform investment. Building the platform with the enterprise in mind means that as the value of the geographic approach becomes more widely appreciated, other departments in the organization will be able to adopt GIS into their workflows with minimal difficulty and expense.

Leverage GIS Investments

Once a strong GIS platform is in place, the focus can shift to getting more people to take advantage of the valuable services, information, and expertise it makes available. A great place to start is by providing self-service mapping capabilities that are accessible to non-GIS users. These web maps and apps address specific needs and streamline processes. As more people become familiar with the value of geographic thinking in problem solving, the GIS professional becomes an internal advocate who can expose users to the platform’s powerful functionality. Over time, the platform evolves to become a critical component of the organizational infrastructure—a powerful way of sharing data, collaborating, and performing analysis.

Be Active in the GIS Community

The GIS community is vibrant, thriving, caring, and supportive. It is a community of like-minded individuals dedicated to using the power of spatial thinking to build better organizations and communities. Opportunities for GIS professionals to participate in and become valuable members of this community include attending conferences, presenting papers, publishing academic papers, writing articles for mainstream media, sharing tradecraft (methods, workflows, models, code), making data available as open data and open services, and mentoring the next generation of GIS professional.

As a GIS professional contributing to the GIS community, you can help advance the adoption and use of GIS technology. You also gain valuable insights and learn best practices that you can implement in your own organization.

The Future of GIS Is in Your Hands

By any measure, this is an exciting time to be a GIS professional. New applications and a growing awareness of the power of GIS are accelerating the need for skilled people in this field. Web mapping and visualization have opened the world’s eyes to the power of the spatial visualization of information and are transforming how people understand the world.

Despite substantial advances in GIS technology over the past few years, the fundamental job of the GIS professional remains more important and more in demand than ever. Your skills are enabling and driving the geospatial transformation taking place across the world. By focusing on building a strong platform, extending the platform across the organization, fully leveraging GIS investments, and being active in the GIS community, you and other GIS professionals will ensure that your organizations are taking full advantage of the power of geography.

]]>http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/12/29/evolving-the-gis-profession/feed/1How Would You Determine the Value of Open Geospatial Information?http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/11/19/how-would-you-determine-the-value-of-open-geospatial-information/
http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/11/19/how-would-you-determine-the-value-of-open-geospatial-information/#commentsWed, 19 Nov 2014 15:37:36 +0000Jim Geringerhttp://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/?p=3848Continue reading →]]>I serve on the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board charged with providing independent advice to the US government on GPS-related policy, planning, program management, and funding. When Lightsquared proposed operating an LTE network in a spectrum adjacent to the GPS spectrum with conditional approval by the FCC, our Board and others raised deep concerns about interference with GPS receivers. The FCC subsequently revoked the conditional approval. In anticipation of similar interference in the future, the PNT Executive Committee, made up of nine federal deputy secretaries, decided that, in consideration of the presidential directive to find more broadband spectrum, even if there might be interference with the GPS signal, our Advisory Board should be tasked with documenting the socioeconomic value of GPS services. The subtle inference was that GPS might be a lesser priority than LTE and broadband access.

So, just how would you document the social and economic benefits provided by GPS? GPS is used practically everywhere today. GPS produces direct and indirect economic and social benefits, tangible and intangible. Expand that thought to include all the geospatial applications in use today such as national security and safety of life. Then include precision agriculture and water resource management and the use of mapping to improve decision making in emergency management, managing endangered species, conducting property tax assessments and verifying insurance claims. Add in many more, including the geo-referencing of earth observation and remote sensing data. Geospatial data is BIG data.

Studies undertaken in the past decade have focused on the direct economic benefits resulting from the manufacture and sale of GPS enabled equipment or other data derived from product manufacture and sale. Only incidental credit has been given to the value of services that use location referenced data.

A number of sources of open data were cited, including the U.S. Federal Open Data Initiative, that are made available at zero or marginal cost, with unrestrictive licensing, and machine readable in standardized data formats. Other countries have similar initiatives.

The Workshop featured two position papers prepared especially for the conference, a series of keynote speeches and several panel discussions. The result was strong participant engagement that pointed to the need to better inform social and natural scientists, researchers, policy makers and analysts, financial analysts, economists, geospatial practitioners, and other experts from government, academia, and the private sector.

Some of the Workshop participants.

So, how would you determine the value of open geospatial information? Not an easy task.

GPS information is only a part of the greater geospatial information picture. Remote sensing, the Internet of Things, geo-referencing of almost anything on your smartphone device—these are just the beginning of ever increasing geospatial information. Then, the enabling of open access to existing and new data leads to more use and creates greater value, particularly compared to access that is granted only by payment of a fee or by meeting restricted access protocols. Access and use have accelerated exponentially through digital access and online delivery.

Economists assess the value of open geospatial data in several ways, such as Investment and Use Value, Contingent Value, Efficiency Impact, Productivity gains, Return on Investment in Data and then Wider Impacts, including societal and safety effects, as described by John Houghton. Private gain and public benefit are analyzed.

Another approach, illustrated below, as presented by Alan Smart at the Workshop, calls attention to the non-direct use values that are highly valued in non-monetary ways.

Geospatial data are an increasing influence on decisions. Policy decisions, as well as investment and business decisions, may be either/or, that is, for or against a particular approach, or they may be comparative, considering the benefits/impacts of two or more options.

Geospatial data is a beginning or intermediate step, with many and multiple possible uses and combinations of data feeding into even more applications and actions, both planned and serendipitous. The value chain starts with data that leads to information followed by analysis, development of scenarios or options and ultimately, actions and decisions. But then results are assessed and decisions updated. The value chain is enhanced by comparing trends and changes in data over time, not just at a point in time. Data is both dynamic and static. With increasing globalization, the value chain impact is seldom felt just locally. The economics change with each update.

In the end however, data alone are of little value. Value comes through the application of data. Tools are essential to distill big data into something useful. Geographic information systems (GIS) are increasingly used as a platform to enable the value chain that results in better decisions.

The Workshop was just one of a series that will continue to assess the socioeconomic value of open geospatial data. Stay tuned. Or better yet, contribute your thoughts on how to calculate value.

]]>http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/11/19/how-would-you-determine-the-value-of-open-geospatial-information/feed/1Understanding the Power of Spatial Analysishttp://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/10/17/understanding-the-power-of-spatial-analysis/
http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/10/17/understanding-the-power-of-spatial-analysis/#commentsFri, 17 Oct 2014 14:22:06 +0000Linda Hechthttp://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/?p=3528Continue reading →]]>Spatial analysis is built in to who we are, and is becoming a common language across organizations

You may not realize it, but you learned about spatial analysis at an early age—probably around the time you started walking. At around two years old, you started to become aware of where you were at any given moment. Soon after that, you started learning how to navigate—from room to room, from inside to outside, and learning how to get from home to school. And at some point, you developed the ability to recognize spatial patterns—a street changed from being safe to dangerous—neighborhoods had their own characteristics.

Spatial analysis is how we understand our world—mapping where things are, how they relate, what it all means, and what actions to take. That’s why whenever we look at maps, we inherently start turning them into instruments for making decisions.

So why is spatial analysis so important to you and your organization?

The benefits of factoring location into your analytics are many. But let me simplify it for you.

When spatial analysis becomes part of the culture of an organization, interesting things start to happen. Communication improves. And collaboration becomes easier. The map becomes the touch point for discussion and problem solving. And because in this day and age the map is a dynamic, statistical medium that can be used to illustrate change over time, people can get answers about what used to happen, what is happening now, and what is likely to happen in future with a high degree of confidence.

Spatial analysis becomes a kind of common language used across an organization.

Spatial analysis lets you answer some very basic questions. It begins with bringing that intrinsic spatial awareness we all share to bear on problems and data.

For example, whereare things located in the world?

This is one of the simplest questions we can answer with spatial analysis. Placing things in geographic context brings those things into immediate perspective. Think about property, sensors, people, video cams, vehicles, aircraft, ships, and tweets. Finding out where these things are—right now—can be very useful in the right context.

Once you know where things are, you can ask questions about what’s nearby.

“Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.”

This basic principle leads to immediate insights. Think about the proximity of customers to retail centers, the impact of development on endangered species, and the risk factors with disease near a population. Finding out what’s nearby can help bring context to dynamic situations and deepen your understanding of a location.

In many cases, things are connected to other things. Understanding that interconnectedness can help you make faster more accurate decisions.

Consider a water supply network. There are water sources, such as lakes, reservoirs, and ground water. There are water delivery systems, including underground pipes, aqueducts, and canals. And then there are pumps, values, meters, and sensors that monitor pressure and flow.

The water supply is connected to homes and businesses. Communities depend on water. Understanding how and where all those things are connected will help you better manage, monitor and maintain the system.

The Power of Spatial Analysis

Knowing the location of things, what’s near them, and how they’re connected can help you make informed decisions when something happens. This means that you can act more quickly when a part of the network is impacted. You can predict what is likely to happen to the interconnected parts of the network. You can trace the problem along the network. You can determine how many homes are impacted and where they are. And you can restore power to a community more quickly. All thanks to the common language of spatial analysis.

—–

This post is an excerpt from my presentation at Computerworld Data+, September 7-9, 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.

]]>http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/10/17/understanding-the-power-of-spatial-analysis/feed/1Unleashing the Power of Location in Your Datahttp://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/10/06/unleashing-the-power-of-location-in-your-data/
http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/10/06/unleashing-the-power-of-location-in-your-data/#commentsMon, 06 Oct 2014 13:29:34 +0000Linda Hechthttp://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/?p=3357Continue reading →]]>Geography just might be the answer to putting big data into context and making it work for everyone

We are all aware that technological advances have increased the size of the data we can capture and manage. I remember reading that approximately 90 percent of all the data in the world today has been created in just that last few years. And more than 75 percent of that data is unstructured, coming from social media, smart phones, text messages, and other sources.

Obviously, the Internet has a lot to do with this explosion of raw data. New industries have been created to help us manage big data, to process it, and to make it consumable. But the real return on investment for organizations is to make big data useful.

For example, watching Twitter and observing tweets about a big storm impacting our coastline is interesting, but it’s not all that useful. From a data perspective, it’s mostly just a lot of noise.

But taking those tweets and mapping their location to see where services are out and where people are in trouble, then making that location-enriched information available to dispatch workers and emergency crews—now that is useful.

A Bustling Airport

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is a busy place. More than 12,000 aircraft, over 100,000 people, and 800+ tons of cargo pass through the airport every day. Nearly a quarter million people are employed at Sky Harbor, resulting in a nearly 10 billion dollar annual payroll. Sky Harbor has a daily economic impact of nearly 80 million dollars. That’s a remarkable amount of business taking place.

Now think about the infrastructure needed to support such an operation. There’s water, electrical, telephone, and computer networks, smoke detectors, air conditioners, security systems, and so on, distributed across four massive terminals and a 3,000 acre facility.

The volume and velocity of data passing through Sky Harbor systems is quite a challenge to manage. Not very long ago, the City of Phoenix, which operates Sky Harbor, realized that the Aviation Department needed an information system that would help improve how workers and operations managers could use this data more efficiently.

They integrated a geographic information system with their enterprise work order management system to help improve the accuracy and efficiency of maintaining their complex infrastructure. Now, for example, when a maintenance worker must repair air conditioning equipment, the worker can access a web portal to find the exact location of the problem unit and also see other nearby equipment that is due for maintenance.

By using maps to visualize and analyze their network data, the Aviation Department can now prioritize work and maximize productivity.

Another way to say it is that by using location, they were able to turn the churn of data overload into actionable results.

The Data to Wisdom Continuum

Sky Harbor illustrates a common model used when talking about big data: the “data to wisdom continuum.”

At the bottom, we see massive volumes of raw data coming from a multitude of sources at a speed that only automated processes can handle. The raw data is filtered or organized into meaningful groups of information so that we can start to make sense of it. Next, the information is given context through analysis and shared with stakeholders in the organization. And finally, we use the results of analysis to make the best decisions and take the most positive actions.

What’s not readily apparent in this model is the concept of location data. Data points such as addresses, coordinates, and other location values are most likely embedded in the raw data, and this location data is often underutilized by organizations.

Using a GIS, you can organize raw location data into networks and geographies to create layers of information. These layers are analyzed and then assembled into maps that provide a proper context for where and how physical features as well as predicted patterns exist in space and in relation to each other.

Finally, you can use maps to prioritize decision-making and taking action.

Geography Provides Answers

Mapping and spatial analysis are best deployed as a location platform. This platform is centered on Web GIS, which includes Portals for organizing and managing spatial data, and mapping services that can be integrated with enterprise applications and data. Web GIS makes it possible to support anyone with authoritative, up-to-date geographic information as part of their routine work. And focused apps make it easy for anyone in the organization to make maps, do analytics, and access shared maps and data.

When you’re using a location platform to help you make decisions, you shouldn’t be looking at your data alone. Not only should you map your data, but you should also consider adding other layers of information in relation to those maps, like the demographics, or perhaps competitive or complementary businesses in the area. And you should look at enriching your databases and spreadsheets with additional columns of information in the same way.

These processes—locating data points in geographic space, analyzing that data to discover patterns and trends, and enriching that data with authoritative geospatial attributes—are all enabled by spatial analysis. Put the power of spatial analysis to work in your organization and you’ll find that geography just might be the answer to putting big data into context and making it work for everyone.

—–

This post is an excerpt from my presentation at Computerworld Data+, September 7-9, 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.

]]>http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/10/06/unleashing-the-power-of-location-in-your-data/feed/0Jack Dangermond Speaks about GIS and Resilience at UN Climate Summithttp://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/10/01/jack-dangermond-speaks-about-gis-and-resilience-at-un-climate-summit/
http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/10/01/jack-dangermond-speaks-about-gis-and-resilience-at-un-climate-summit/#commentsWed, 01 Oct 2014 14:49:46 +0000Jack Dangermondhttp://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/?p=3422Continue reading →]]>UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited world leaders from government, business, and society to the UN Climate Summit 2014 to stimulate action on climate change. He asked them to bring big ideas and messages that could help reduce emissions, strengthen climate resilience, and mobilize political will to hopefully pave the way for a meaningful global agreement in 2015.

I was deeply honored to be invited to speak about GIS and resilience last week at the UN Climate Summit 2014. Following is a summary of my talk there.

—–

Thank you your excellencies and prime ministers, ladies and gentlemen, guests. Thank you very much for allowing me to share a little bit about my work, and also the work that we are working on with the UNISDR, and a number of other organizations here.

My field—my specialty, is in geography—geographic information systems, or sometimes referred to as GIS. Today this technology is advancing to become a kind of platform for analytics for the integration of multiple types of earth science and other data, and is used for visualizing, for planning, for modeling, for making better plans about everything that’s changing.

It’s a very practical means of linking science with action, and it was used in Fukushima. It’s been used at a global level. It’s been used on literally hundreds of thousands of projects around the world.

It supports this notion of risk assessment clearly, but also provides an information platform for making decisions about the future. I would dare say, creating the future.

There are some hundreds of thousands of organizations currently using it around the planet for almost everything. But in the last few years, the technology has been changing—moving to the cloud and the web—so that it opens up access to the information and tools to virtually everyone. This is a dramatic change.

Jack Dangermond speaks at the UN Climate Summit on Sept. 23, 2014. You can see the video here (forward to 36:24).

Starting last spring, the UNISDR and Esri, my organization, formed a collaboration, along with some others, to announce a challenge for entrepreneurs, young people, start-ups, and seasoned organizations to build apps on top of this new kind of geographic information system. And today, we’re announcing two winners. I’d like acknowledge these two winners. They’ve worked very hard. [Note: Updated information on the winners of the challenge is available here.]

Today we’re also announcing a grant for software training and technology and information to 50 cities in developing countries. This is over five million dollars of resources that will be made available to help leverage geographic information and models in this space.

We’re also creating a new marketplace where these apps and other apps will become a kind of new accelerator of invention, working on geographic-based solutions for different organizations in both the developed world and less developed world.

I believe these will help create better understanding, and clearly, understanding should precede action.

Recently the National Academy of Sciences convened a Workshop on Identifying Transformative Research in the Geographical Sciences. Given that so many of the challenges that we currently face are place-based (climate shifts, population migrations, depletion of resources, spread of diseases and terrorism, etc.), the attendees of this workshop were asked to consider and define the role of the geographical sciences in transforming our understanding and approaches toward meeting these challenges. To wit, what makes research transformative beyond merely innovative, excellent, or even strategic?

Professor May Yuan of the University of Texas at Dallas remarked that the fact that we have geographic information systems and science is transformative in and of itself! Certainly mapping and storing geographical information has changed the practice of many sciences, and has led to new emphases in spatial statistics and spatial humanities. But how do we go further? How does geography and GIS continue to address problems that really matter: to our theories, our methodologies, our best practices? How do we engender collaborations and partnerships that cross boundaries, intersect disciplines, and empower communities and networks from global to local? How do we train students to do transformative research, and further, to support it financially as well as intellectually? How do we see and appreciate the unexpected, to know why it’s unexpected, to be curious about what is creating the unexpected result, and how it all fits into a broader framework? What is a reasonable length of time from basic research to possible productization within [the GIS] industry?

The Gartner Group Hype Cycle on Emerging Technologies for 2013 (courtesy of Gartner Inc.). Click to enlarge.

The meeting perhaps raised more questions than answers, but the discussions will inform an extended expert study by the National Research Council within the National Academy of Sciences to be released in 2015. As an invited representative of Esri to this workshop, I was asked to consider transformative research in the context of three overarching themes:

1. How has transformative research emerged and how did it become transformative?

Some research has become transformative because of what we can DO NOW. One example lies in the widespread application of geographically weighted regression (GWR). GWR represents a move from regional or global models of measured and mapped relationships to local scales, and has thus been an extremely important advance in “methods, models, and GIS.” GWR has made it possible for different locations to be represented by their own regression models, and as such has “gone viral” as a concept and a technique. It is has been incorporated into hundreds of different studies, from mapping and understanding crime in cities to the distribution of habitats on the seafloor. GWR has also gained the attention of industry and has, for example, been formally incorporated into the core functionality of ArcGIS for Desktop, which further exposes the research to literally millions of users beyond the academic sector. In my opinion, this is a significant marker for transformative geographic research because it will be leveraged in so many ways not originally foreseen by the authors, thus fostering an even longer lineage for the research.

Another example lies in the ocean where only 5 to 10% of the waters beneath the surface and the seafloor have been explored and mapped in a level of detail similar to what already exists for Mars, Venus, and the dark side of the Moon. Even so we are still approaching tremendous accomplishments: current mapping systems located beneath ships are routinely linked to underwater video or photographs collected from vehicles towed behind ships, and are collated to samples and measurements collected from instrument or vehicles either launched away from ships or operating independently on the ocean floor. With today’s modern dual-head sonars that capture shallow bathymetry, backscatter, and water column characteristic, the rate of data collection is ~115 GB/hour. Our sensor count in the ocean already approaches 2 million and that will likely double every five years. So the oceans have always been about “big data,” despite how much remains to be explored. And these data collection enterprises have transformed ocean science (including marine and coastal geography) from a predominately modular, individualistic science into national and multinational interdisciplinary science collaboratives [Briscoe, 2008]. This has certainly transformed our understanding of all aspects of the oceans, from the structure and tectonics of the ocean crust, to the abundance, diversity, and overall health of hundreds of species of ocean life, of storm systems and dangerous tsunami events from underwater earthquakes, and much more.

Some research has become transformative because of what we CANNOT do. The treatise of Hey et al. [2009] posits a new paradigm of scientific discovery focused in part on handling the inundation of data from satellites, sensors, and other measuring systems and the issues associated with those large data sets. This goes beyond the existing three paradigms of empiricism, analysis, and simulation to a fourth where insight is discovered through the manipulation and exploration of large data sets. A 2008 issue of the journal Nature focused especially on semantics in big data: “The future of science depends in part on the cleverness of search engines being applied specifically to scientific data.”

Some research should have been transformative, but in hindsight was not. Some of it is considered transformative now because in the past it was not even considered to be a research area (e.g., the “respect” now afforded by other disciplines to geographic information science, the current emergence of “data science” or “informatics”). Indeed informatics was largely ignored in oceanography at its peril given the emergence of new data collection capabilities. Only recently has it come to the fore [Baker and Chandler, 2008]; many would say just in the nick of time. Witness also the National Science Foundation’s requirement of data management plans as part of grant proposals, unheard of a mere 10 years ago.

2. What might be the early markers of transformative research and how does it become possible to identify its transformative character?

An early marker of transformative research may be how disruptive, risky, audacious, or controversial it is. But it becomes accepted and deemed transformative with the fascinating research problems it presents, and the technology investment it engenders. To wit, the rise of the drones (e.g., unmanned/uncrewed aerial vehicles or UAVs), and the interesting GIS challenges they pose for georeferencing frames in full motion video, and interpolating telemetry and metadata therein. Indeed some transformative developments “come out of left field,” showing in part the benefits of just “letting the engineers play” [e.g., Bellingham et al., 2007] or let scientists be “distracted” by multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary investigations [Scheffer, 2014].

Acknowledging that societal issues have become huge drivers of science is transformational (in my opinion) and for some is a disruptive concept. In this context science is conducted not only to increase our fundamental understanding of the Earth, but also to protect life and property, to promote economic vitality, and to enable stewardship of the environment. In seeking to communicate not only to fellow scientists but also to policy-makers and journalists, we are navigating and transforming the rules of scientific engagement [Smith et al., 2013]. Indeed, there are many unresolved policy problems in society, such as high unemployment and economic competitiveness, oil and gas versus alternative energy, proper stances against nuclear proliferation, public health issues, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity, all of which increasingly revolve around science. Government leaders, particularly in the US, struggle with the ramifications of critical societal challenges such as climate change, environmental hazards, and living sustainably. And science is now often part of an unavoidable and contentious public discussion of these issues. Many argue that scientists need to participate in catalyzing solutions to these problems.

3. What has helped nurture and bring transformative research to fruition and how can it be fostered?

Increasingly, scientists who are communicators are moving into positions of leadership, engaging with society, and changing their academic institutions from within, training the next generation of scholars to respect and implement science communication.

Another alternative form of science communication is that of scientific “storytelling.” In general, the approaches and technologies of geographic information science can be used quite effectively to tell “stories” about important connections among scientists (e.g., within Stanford’s Leopold Leadership Program), their messages, audiences, and ultimately stories about the world. Combining the new medium of “intelligent Web maps” with text, multimedia content, and intuitive user experiences has a great potential to inform, educate, entertain, and inspire decision-makers about a wide variety of environmental issues [e.g., Field, 2012; Wright, 2013].

In summary:

Transformative = what we can DO NOW.

Transformative = what we CANNOT do now.

Disruptive can be transformative, including societal drivers for science and science communication.

“Many of the breakthroughs in science were made by people who were…distracted” [Scheffer, 2014].

Thanks to Erik Hoel for helpful discussions and the image that contributed to this post.

In the not too distant past we were at the mercy of these changes, and we handled them poorly. But by leveraging new tools and capabilities we’re in a better position than ever before to predict, prepare for, and respond to these changes.

What does it take to address and mitigate these challenges, to become resilient? Here are four key GIS building blocks that form the framework.

Access to Great Data

One of the key ingredients for resilience is to have access to the right data to gain understanding, to plan, and to act—data that represents the best of our knowledge, is reliable, and is authoritative. This essential data can’t be locked up and hidden on our servers; it needs to be discoverable and open.

There are already many examples of community portals that provide access to great data. The Group on Earth Observations—GEOSS—is one such community, and Data.gov is another. Many others examples can be found and their numbers are growing as the task of creating open data portals becomes easier.

Esri recently released ArcGIS Open Data as a configurable part of every ArcGIS organization. This new capability will make it easier for all GIS organizations to make their data more open and available, and for anyone to find it.

Services and Applications

Along with opening up data, we also need to unlock the potential of that data—to tap into the knowledge contained within. This requires tools, best implemented as services, which can be applied to that data to leverage its intrinsic knowledge. Great tools can amplify and make “just data” more useful and valuable.

But tools alone don’t make it possible to reach our intended audience; we also need to frame them in larger user experiences—as applications. These applications should be finely tuned to our intended users, whether that be scientists, GIS colleagues, decision makers, or the public.

To become resilient, we also need to open up communication and create awareness. We need to deliver information about important topics and issues, and most importantly begin conversations about them. And we can do that by telling stories with maps.

Esri Story Maps are a very popular and effective way to communicate, and you’ve probably already made a few of your own. Story Maps combine interactive maps and multimedia—text, photos, videos, even 3D Web Scenes, and more—to create elegant user experiences. And they make it easy to use the power of maps to tell your stories.

Collaboration

The essence of driving change, making better decisions, and becoming more resilient is rooted in collaboration. And when you apply GIS to that collaboration process, something powerful happens: you enable deeper understanding, and more informed decisions; you open minds, and open opportunities.

GeoPlanner for ArcGIS provides a GIS-based platform to support all the steps of land-based planning. From project creation and data management to creating and evaluating scenarios and preparing project reports, you can manage all aspects of your planning process more efficiently and collaboratively by applying the principles of geodesign.

Building a Resilient Future

As GIS practitioners we face many different challenges, and those brought on by climate change are among them. With a GIS framework built on access to great data, services and applications, communication, and collaboration, we now have available the tools and capabilities to meet these challenges and build a more resilient future.

We try to predict the future every day. You think about what the weather might be like. You think about what might happen with your favorite sports team. You think about what the future might hold for you.

Beyond prediction, some of us are actually engaged professionally in creating the future. Because as Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict the future is to create the future.”

2014 Esri User Conference Plenary: GIS–Creating Our Future.

We live in two worlds.

We live in the ordinary world—a world where we go to work, we eat, we have our family, and we have our friends. We operate in this world in a stimulus-response mode—things happen, we respond, and then we go about our daily lives.

At the same time, we live in an extraordinary world of imagining, thinking, dreaming, and creating.

We live in these ordinary and extraordinary worlds at the same time.

A good example of this is the life of an architect. An architect imagines, plans, and designs, and then creates.

But you and I also do this every day in our own daily lives. We imagine buying a house, or we imagine a new career…we imagine all sorts of things. And when we act on our imagination, we create something: we create a new future.

We are also living in a world facing serious challenges, such as population growth, urbanization, pollution, natural resource depletion, and climate change. These challenges not only impact us as individuals, but affect everything. This in turn is also affecting our social world in terms of social controversies, conflicts, and migrations.

From severe climate events, to drought, to food production challenges, the world we live in is a complex, interconnected web. We live in an unprecedented time where the work that you do with geography is more important than ever.

GIS is Integrating geography into everything we do, changing the way we think and act.

Geography as a science provides us the context and the content of our world. It provides a framework for understanding our world by bringing all our measurements together, analyzing and visualizing them, and ultimately results in a new understanding. And GIS is the medium that helps us to understand.

Today, GIS is integrating geographic knowledge into virtually everything we do. It’s changing the way we think by helping us to see and understand things differently, within our own organizations as well as at the planetary level. And it’s also changing how we act. As Richard Saul Wurman says, “Understanding precedes action.”

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GIS itself continues to evolve, and as a result your individual systems are now becoming part of a larger interconnected platform. Your servers are connecting, your desktops are connecting, and your apps are being fed by shared community content. This web GIS is a new pattern that’s coevolving with faster machines, web services, open environments, open policies, and networks.

Web GIS is bringing together all of our data, technologies, and people. It lets you share your own focused work in the form of web maps and web services, throughout your organizations as well as on the web to the world. This creates a framework where we can collaboratively work to address the complex challenges facing our world.

Web GIS integrates all types of information, organizing and sharing your work both internally and on the open web.

Web GIS is also leveraging advancing technologies—the world of measurement, the world of computing, and the world of networks, and layering on top of that infrastructure. This “nervous system of the planet” brings our world’s information to life.

In addition, the app revolution is making this web GIS, and all of its content, available everywhere. Anyone can now access this new medium of web services and web maps anytime, anywhere, on any device, bringing GIS to life in whole new ways and transforming how GIS professionals work.

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Fundamental to this idea of creating the future is the concept of geodesign. Geodesign takes geographic information and links it to the design, decision-making, and planning process using collaboration. It does this by building the power of GIS into the process, allowing alternative plans to visualized, compared, and evaluated. The end result is better, more informed decisions.

I was first introduced to this methodology almost 50 years ago by my professor, Carl Steinitz, and it set me on a course I’ve followed for my entire career. And it’s much more than just a landscape architecture concept or a planning concept. Geodesign is equally important for businesspeople wanting to locate stores as it is for farmers who want to plant crops. In fact, geodesign has a role to play in almost every activity.

For the GIS professional, geodesign extends your work from the science side into the creative side—from the ordinary world to the extraordinary world. I would like everyone to think about becoming geodesigners. It’s the right time for us all to move in this direction, because the technology is here now and it can play an important role in helping us to solve the world’s problems.

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The mission of creating a better future depends heavily on GIS professionals. It is you who can envision what’s possible, understand and embrace and fully leverage these new web GIS and geodesign tools, show leadership, and do the difficult work we have ahead of us.

Creating a better future requires GIS professionals.

Seeing the work you do, and knowing what I know about the technology and where it’s going, this isn’t just a possibility. I think it’s actually inevitable. As GIS professionals, you are already imagining the future, and working hard to create it. You are the future.